Okay, maybe that title is a bit overblown but would you read a blog titled "The very pleasant and the somewhat unpleasant"? Anyway, Thursday morning we left Cochi for our much anticipated houseboat excursion on the "backwaters" of Kerela. The boat was very impressive with two nice bedrooms, a kitchen and a very large, open living/dining area up front. Though designed for four passengers, Shawne and I were the only ones on board with a crew of three. Things started well enough with a warm greeting and heading straight out through the canals of the backwaters.
The backwaters really are beautiful. Some lakes, some narrow canals. Lots of birds, interesting boats, water taxis, rice fields, and life along the shore. Cruising through the backwaters is the "ecstasy" part. The "agony" was that we stopped after about 30-45 minutes for a very long lunch break not too far from a temple that was blarring very, very loud music on loudspeakers, and it went on and on and on. It feels somewhat culturally insensitive to complain about this but it was not the relaxing time I was expecting besides which it was hot and humid with the boat stopped. Eventually we got going again and were back to the ecstasy with stunning, peaceful scenery. We parked on a quiet canal for the night which was very nice. There was some more "agony" when I got a bit sick that night and the bedding was hard and uncomfortable and I didn't sleep well. The backwaters are not to be missed but the venue for seeing them could have been improved. In the morning we had a nice short cruise to the dock and were off by car to Periyar Tiger Preserve.
One last intersting thing about interesting about Kerila is that it is a hotbed of communism. There are two parties that trade control and one is the CPI, Communist Party of India. There were lots of CPI flags on the canals.
2 comments:
I think you and mom are probably far more culturally sensitive than most would expect from American tourists, so I think you're in the clear. It's one thing to say "hey, that's loud and obnoxious." It would be another to ask your crew to go tell the folks in the temple to turn the music off. I think you're in the clear.
Maybe so. One of the problems was that I didn't speak their language and they didn't speak much English. I went back to the kitchen area a couple of times to get things moving but we couldn't really talk that much and I kept hoping we were about to get started again so didn't press them.
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